Practice Areas

About Eric Alan Isaacson

I'm a 1985 graduate of the Duke University School of Law, where I served on the editorial board of the Duke Law Journal and graduated with high honors. I then served as a judicial clerk for the Honorable J. Clifford Wallace on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, a court that handles appeals from the federal district courts in Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Oregon, Montana and Washington.

Following my judicial clerkship, I worked for three years as a litigation associate with a large law firm in Los Angles, where I was on the trial team for a major trademark-infringement action.

In 1989, I moved to San Diego and joined the plaintiffs' class-action bar as an associate with Milberg, Weiss, Bershad, Hynes & Lerach, LLP, which at the time was America's largest plaintiffs' side class-action law firm, and where I became a partner in January of 1994. Roughly a decade later, in May 2004, I and some other West Coast partners left Milberg Weiss to found a new firm that soon took the lead in prosecuting major securities-fraud class actions.

Most of my time with America's largest plaintiffs' side class-action law firms was devoted to federal civil appeals in complex class actions – including securities, antitrust and consumer cases. I also devoted substantial time to pro bono public service, working with the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation on several matters, and filing amicus curiae briefs for religious organizations and faith leaders in many others.

Public Service And Legal Scholarship

Public Service

Much of my time over the years has been devoted to public service.

I am a founding member of the American Constitution Society San Diego Lawyer Chapter, which I currently serve as social-media chair. I also have served on the board of the San Diego Foundation for Change, and I am currently a member of the editorial board of Skinner House Books, which is an imprint of the Unitarian Universalist Association.

I have devoted thousands of hours over my career to pro bono legal work – working for free with or on behalf of nonprofit organizations seeking social justice.

Since 2005, for example, I have represented religious organizations as amici curiae or "friends of the court" supporting religious freedom and equal rights for all.

Over more than a decade, I represented the California Council of Churches, the Unitarian Universalist Justice Ministry and many other religious organizations and faith leaders supporting same-sex couples' right to marry – first in state court, in California's Marriage Cases, and then in both state and federal challenges to California's Proposition 8. I also represented the California Council of Churches, the Unitarian Universalist Justice Ministry, and other California religious organizations before the U.S. Supreme Court in Hollingsworth v. Perry, 133 S.Ct. 2652 (2013), which saw the end of California's ban on same-sex marriages, and in Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. ___, 135 S.Ct. 2584 (2015), which finally sustained same-sex couples' constitutional right to marry in all the United States.

My pro bono legal work has been recognized with awards, including the American Constitution Society San Diego Lawyer Chapter's Roberto Alvarez Award (January 2014); the St. Paul's Foundation for International Reconciliation's Hero Award (February 2013); the Democrats for Equality Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Community Service (November 17, 2012); and the Unitarian Universalist Association President's Annual Award for Volunteer Service, awarded by the Rev. Dr. William G. Sinkford at the Unitarian Universalist Association's 48th General Assembly in Salt Lake City, Utah (June 2009).

Legal Scholarship

In addition to my legal practice, I have published scholarly articles in academic law reviews and bar journals. Some of my articles focus on issues related to class actions, and to securities-fraud cases in particular. Others deal with religious liberty, civil rights, and equal protection of the law.

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